Anita Busch Joins Deadline Hollywood As Film Editor

Penske Media Corporation’s Jay Penske and Deadline Hollywood co-editors Nellie Andreeva and Mike Fleming announce that veteran entertainment journalist Anita M. Busch is joining Deadline. She will become the film editor, covering everything from box office to marketing and helping steer Deadline.com’s film coverage with Fleming. She starts Dec. 2 and can be reached at anita@deadline.com.

Busch is the former editor of The Hollywood Reporter and former film editor of Variety and has worked for The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, Time magazine, and other leading publications.

Both Andreeva and Fleming have a long history with Busch. She hired and mentored Andreeva at The Hollywood Reporter, and she and Fleming worked closely together for years at Variety dominating film industry news.

“We thought Anita had put the entertainment business in her rearview mirror, but we jumped at the chance when we discovered that she wanted to return to journalism,” said Andreeva and Fleming. “Both of us loved working with her, and Mike even loved competing against her. To say she is one of the most aggressive, resourceful and thoughtful journalists we’ve seen in our time covering Hollywood is underselling her. Anita is a force of nature. She is also a generous spirit who always brought out the best in us. We are delighted to bring her back, and we can’t wait to see her put her mark on box office and the film coverage here at Deadline.”

Said Busch,“I look forward to working with the staff at Deadline, especially Mike and Nellie who are great people and top-notch reporters, and I truly believe in Jay Penske’s vision of digital brand building. I’ve always known that journalism is what I was born to do, and can’t wait to return to the work that I love.”

During her career as an editor and reporter, Busch has covered the gamut of the entertainment industry, including film, exhibition, marketing and distribution, talent deals, mergers and acquisitions, studios and agencies, festivals and foreign financing. She broke new ground in 1990 becoming the first daily entertainment marketing reporter in the country.

Busch began her career in Chicago at Advertising Age magazine as an editor/reporter covering the automotive, beverage and cosmetics industries, TV syndication, test marketing and college marketing. She also covered the commercial production industry at Backstage/Shoot for a seven-state region in the Midwest.

Most recently, Busch has devoted herself tirelessly to being an advocate for crime victims. After her cousin was murdered at the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado that left 12 dead and 70 injured, Busch helped create a new model for charitable giving that ensures that 100% of donations collected for victims of mass murders go directly to those victims.

Busch and Aurora mother Caren Teves gathered together parents and family members of those killed in some of the worst mass murders in U.S. history – 9/11, Columbine, Virginia Tech, Northern Illinois University, Aurora, Oak Creek Sikh Temple and Sandy Hook – to craft the protocol for the National Compassion Fund. That protocol is now being implemented by the D.C.-based National Center for Victims of Crime. It was used as guide to help government officials construct the Boston One Fund for the families of those injured and killed in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Busch also worked with the Association for the Recovery of Children, which rescues kidnapped and exploited children from around the world. She has received many awards, but is most proud of the Courage Award from the National Center for Victims of Crime for her work on behalf of crime victims.